The above is a
great piece of writing, I think. It is an amazing piece of
propaganda that should be studied by all people who want to sell lies. Hell, I almost believed it myself. Fortunately, I know people who were actually there, so I can tell the truth apart from the lies.
What's so great about it? It is very well written, and shows that the writer is educated. It includes a lot of hard facts. So much so, that the reader begins to believe everything is fact. It subtly intertwines truth with lies. It appears to give both sides of the story, but really it gives only one. It seems objective. It is not written in an angry tone, but seems to simply reflect the horrible truth.
Read the writeup on Logical fallacies before you read the above writeup. prophet4's excellent w/u explains some of the techniques used by the above writeup to make the lies sound true.
"on the eve of Operation Defensive Shield, a senior Israeli military officer was quoted by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahranot as stating that in view of the character of the upcoming Israeli operation, the Nazi campaign to subdue the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 required careful study as an example of succesful urban combat." What???? I live in Israel and I haven't heard of this? And nor has anyone who I just called up to ask about this. I'm sorry, but if an officer ever said that, he would be on every headline in every newspaper and news broadcast and he would be kicked right the fuck out of the army.
"according to various accounts disposing of corpses in the sewage system, burying them in mass graves within the camp, and loading them onto trucks and burying them in mass graves within Israel and/or the Jordan valley. Again, what???? I don't think so. Again, vivid holocaust imagery, but it never happened.
"summary executions". No, I don't think so. Just another lie.
Listen up. What happened in Jenin was pretty horrible, on both sides, but especially on the Palestinian side (i.e. yes, I agree that what happened to the civilians living there was bad). There was casualties. The destruction of houses happened because every second house was booby-trapped, not for the enjoyment of Israeli soldiers. I have a friend who just came back, and they did everything in their power to not harm civilians. Yes, it was bad. No, war crimes were not committed. Of course reporters weren't allowed in. Every second house was booby-trapped, and there was a LOT of gunfire on every street.
Don't believe everything you read, however well written.
I just got a message saying I didn't explain the Israeli side very well. I wasn't trying to. I'm not going to write a big explanation here. It's not what I set out to do. If you are interested in the Jenin situation, the news is full of it. And anyway, I'm not going to try to give another one-sided view of the situation. But the above writeup is spreading lies, and after it got 4 C!s, and especially from someone whom I NEVER expected to C! it (who believed what he read!!!), I had to reply. If you want to know the truth about Jenin, read about it elsewhere on the web, not here. (Who knows, maybe this will urge someone to write a factual writeup about Jenin. I hope it does.)
Editors: Should the above w/u be killed, as I hope it will (it's not fact, and should definitely not have been noded under "place"), please remove this one too.